Students who haven't mastered reading by third grade are more likely to get stuck in a cycle of academic failure and struggle throughout their lives.

Virginia Carmody is executive director of the Literacy Coalition of Onondaga County. Joel Delmonico is chair of the coalition and former VP and Regional Market Manager of Clear Channel Media + Entertainment.

By Virginia Carmody and Joel Delmonico

Last week, it was quite an honor to have our collaborative work to promote early reading nationally recognized by the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading by being named a 2013 Community Pacesetter. Syracuse's plan focuses attention on the most important predictor of school success and high school graduation -- grade-level reading by the end of third grade. This milestone marks the point when children shift from learning to read and begin reading to learn. Students who haven't mastered reading by then are more likely to get stuck in a cycle of academic failure, drop out of school, and struggle throughout their lives.

Through the leadership of the Central New York Community Foundation, a community-wide literacy intiative was launched and has evolved into the Literacy Coalition of Onondaga County.

This effort is built upon the original strategic planning process that took place when over 200 community members met in extensive planning sessions to establish a community-wide literacy plan with a focus on specific community literacy outcome indicators and priority recommendations towards achieving a shared vision of 100% Literacy through 100% Community Engagement.

The success of our efforts is due in large part to the commitment of our partners from the city and county school districts, city and county government leaders, community residents, local foundations, nonprofit organizations, county library, Syracuse University, Le Moyne College and Onondaga Community College, literacy providers and business leaders.

As charter members of the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, we know that schools cannot succeed alone and the academic success of children, especially from low-income families, requires engaged communities. We've also joined with the Onondaga Citizens League in their current study of Early Childhood Education. The importance of early childhood experiences to school readiness and long-term educational performance levels is generally accepted and expansion of publicly supported pre-K has been proposed recently at both the federal and state levels.

During his recent visit to Syracuse, Ralph Smith, the senior vice president of the Annie E. Casey Foundation and managing director for the Campaign for Grade Level Reading, spoke with the Onondaga Citizen Leagues' Early Childhood Education Study Committee. Its purpose is to help survey the current early childhood education landscape in Onondaga County, assess the concerns and challenges, and consider how we might more effectively deploy our existing resources toward the goal that all children enter school ready to learn. Their final recommendations are due to be announced this spring.

We know one of the most effective approaches to develop strong literacy skills for a child is to inspire the love of reading and learning at an early age. As a result, the coalition has launched Imagination Library, a program that delivers age-appropriate books via the mail monthly to children from birth to age 5 in over 1,000 communities across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia. With our 40-plus community referral partners, including St. Joseph's Hospital and Onondaga County Departments of Health and Social Services, we have enrolled 3,144 children and distributed 44,902 Imagination Library books in three Syracuse ZIP codes -- 13203, 13208, 13204. That's half of the city of Syracuse!

Ongoing and rigorous evaluation of our local Imagination Library program is being conducted by a team of researchers from the Le Moyne College Center for Urban and Regional Applied Research. Our local research, which is peer reviewed and has been published, shows evidence of increased reading behavior. A new study, published recently by the Urban Child Institute, is the first rigorous statistical study. It shows even more positive outcomes: that enrollment in Imagination library has a significant and positive impact on kindergarten readiness in early language and math skills.

Furthermore, the RFP for the fourth Round of our Literacy Champion Grants was announced to encourage high-quality family literacy programming to further leverage the impact of Imagination Library books being delivered to the homes, and to help us conduct ongoing evaluation that will improve the analysis of our work. In the 2013-2014 program year we plan to offer, for the first time, professional development opportunities for our adult education and family literacy providers to encourage programs to provide a strengths-based approach to the parents enrolled as we recognize them as the first and most important teacher of their children.

With the help of our community partners, we are always moving forward... with the expectation that our kids will enter kindergarten ready to learn. Our kids will go to school every day. Our kids will participate in strong summer learning opportunities to avoid a skills gap. Our kids will graduate. Our kids will contribute to the local and global economy.